Archive for the ‘Alt’ Category

It appears update 14 brought not only Gondor to us, it also brought back the challenge of T2 and T2C instances!

The last couple of years the level of challenge in instances has been reduced, time and time again. It started with RoR, and went completely overboard in HD. This, along with other factors such as the Trait trees, and Turbines decision to not make any traditional instanced group content drove away many people from the game. But with update 14 something happened.

Our tactical mitigation contribution from Vitality had already been removed in an earlier update, but given the difficulty of T2 and T2C stuff, this was probably not something many thought of. And then comes update 14, which has increased the difficulty in instanced group content significantly.

While T1 is still pretty easy, T2 and T2C content has been ramped up so much, that there’s been several topics created around it on the official forums.

But there’s not just complints, as even in these threads, people are not only saying that despite the increased difficulty these instances can be completed by a good group, they’re actually showing it. In fact, there’s a thread created for just that purpose! I can’t even remember the last time there was one of those threads on the official forums.

There has also been several threads created just to thank Turbine for giving us the challenge back in instances.
Like this one, and this one.

I haven’t had much time to do instances myself since U14, and the ones I have done have been T1’s, but I can’t wait to try out some of the old instances again with the difficulty ramped up. It was so long ago since Lotro had a real challenge, so I will probably suck pretty badly until I get into it again. Just imagine, you might actually have instances where you need stat food, potions, scrolls and hope tokens. Where you actually have to pay attention to interupts and corruptions. Where you might actually wipe your group if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.

After Helms Deep I only levelled up 2 out of my 10 chars at 85 to 95, it just felt like there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to level the rest. Now, I have started to level my alts again, because I just can’t wait to get my hands on these “new” challenges.

Let’s just hope that Turbine doesn’t listen to the few complainers (that probably should stay with the T1 instances) and nerf everything back in to oblivion before I get my chars capped and geared.

So thanks to CSTM’s facebook page, I found this, a collection of screenshots from Lotro, all the way back from early beta.

I started playing Lotro in January 2009, and has since then managed to snap almost 1000 screenshots. I recently went through all my old computers/harddrives, to make sure none of my old screenshots would get lost.

So why not share a bunch of them?

2009-11-20 – The very first screenshot I found, may very well have been the first I took. My hunter posing in Evendim

2009-11-22 – Oh, that old place! Probably the first time I ventured in there

2009-12-12 – Planning raids and smoking pipes in the Kinhsip house

2010-01-06 – My captain has found his look-a-like!

2010-01-17 – All dressed up and nowhere to go!

2010-09-12 – DN, low resolution and lots on the screen.

2010-11-02 – Crowded auctioneer in 21st hall

2010-12-05 – School, or is it Library? Never could keep those two apart

Finally! The European servers are now down for maintenance and we are getting F2P!

My Warden has now hit 59 which means that he can actually be of some use in the Moria instances. And yesterday I did my first “real” tanking with my Warden. We did a GS HM run and i got to tank Igash (while our guardian took care of the Devoted and his archers). I must say that i enjoyed it quite a bit!

I’ve studied tanking with a Warden a lot by reading on the web, mostly other blogs. Because of this I knew pretty much what to expect. I expected some trouble getting initial aggro, but that holding aggro once i got it would be no problem. Both these things were true.

Being used to playing a Hunter in the six man instances and raids, it was quite the opposite being a tank. Normally, with the Hunter, I do anything i can to not get aggro, which can get quite boring when all you want is to see really large yellow numbers. It was definitely more satisfying being a tank, where you don’t have to hold back, you just have to go nuts! Thankfully, I also had a lvl 65 Healer keeping me alive, making it a bit easier than it really should be.

The silence from Codemasters is deafening right now. There is a thread now 193 pages long in the EU forums, mostly containing very upset players. The most upsetting thing is not the delay in itself, but the lack of communication from Codemasters, which has lead to a number of different theories on why there is a delay in the first place. Since I am a subscriber, and will let my account just roll into VIP when (if?) F2P comes, i don’t really care that much about the delay. Sure, it would be nice to see the new area, but it’ll come eventually anyway. We did get the welcome back week, at least until recently, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to power-level my Warden.

The Warden class is really cool to play, for several reasons. First of all, there’s a lot of gambits, and even if they can be hard to remember at times, it’s a fun way to test out different ways to play. All the self-healing and morale-leeching gambits really help when taking on high-morale bosses, and the DPS on the spear-gambits actually isn’t that bad. Sure, a Warden can’t keep up with the traditional DPS-classes when it comes to DPS, but for a tank, it’s outstanding. I have now hit 44 on my Warden, and I’m planning on moving into Eregion very soon, first of all to collect the last pages for my book-deeds, but also to get ready for Moria.

Started a new char this weekend. I had a level 11 dwarf guardian on my account, wich I never played, so I deleted it, and created a new guardian (Man). Got it up to level fifteen in just over 6 hours, if I remebmer correctly. This Guardian will be all about leveling. No effort will be put into any proffession and no grinding for deeds will be done. Now that there’s a 10% exp buff on the server, i’ve got a feeling it won’t be that hard to get him up to atleast level 40 before Mirkwood comes out. Ofcourse, that means I’m gonna have to play it alot, and let my other alts rest for a while.

Talking of rest… That is the one thing that stands in the way of even faster leveling. I get no (or well, very little) rest XP bonus if I play the Guardian all the time. And I don’t want to waste my destiny points on it either. Oh well, we’ll see what happens.

In the end, it’s pretty much all about wich alt I want to be able to take with me in to Mirkwood. The Hunter is already at 60, but the others are all around 20-30. The Captain would be awesome, but so would the Runekeeper.